A WOMAN WAS struck by lighting while standing at her kitchen sink yesterday in Crinkle, near Birr in County Offaly. 

Caroline Blake was making a cup of coffee and “was putting the spoon down into the sink (when) sparks came out of it, there was a massive explosion in the kitchen. And the smell of burning,” she told RTE Radio 1. 

“The bang was so loud it was like an explosion”. 

“It kind of set me back a bit on my feet and I became a bit disoriented and didn’t know what was happening. I could hear all this, you know, like electricity. I could hear the buzzing of all this electricity.

“And next thing it hit my hand as I was putting the spoon back down into the sink, and after then it just stopped after a few seconds. It just seemed to go on forever. It’s so hard to explain how quickly it happened and how quickly kind of ended,” she said.

In the confusion, Caroline wasn’t sure what to do but managed to call her husband, she said. 

“I didn’t know who I was going to ring. I was on my own. So I managed I get to the phone and I rang my husband and he said he was coming home straight away.

“But the storm became very intense at that stage and I was worried. I didn’t want any of them driving because of what happened to me.”

Luckily, her daughter arrived in the door not long later. 

“Just as I left down the phone, my daughter arrived from Dublin and came in and she goes ‘Oh mammy!’ and I said, I’m after being struck”.

She was taken to her local doctor who then sent her to Tullamore Hospital, where doctors told her it was lucky she had been wearing rubber soled shoes. 

“I had my runners on. So I said that’s what saved me and the doctor even told me that would save you, you know, so I was so happy. They kept me in for a few hours and everything was okay and they gave me a few tablets,” she said. 

“Today now I feel like I have a hangover. That’s the only way I can explain it, just a bad headache,” she said. She said she also had a sore, runny eye and some minor burns on her wrist and abdomen.”

She couldn’t help laughing at the idea she’d survived being hit by lightning. 

“Everybody keeps telling me to do the lottery.”